Supes Grant Lease for Bolsa Chica Wetlands Education Center

The Orange County Board of Supervisors approved a lease Tuesday with the Bolsa Chica Conservancyfor an 8,000-square-foot interpretive center at the Bolsa Chica wetlands. Gardens, classrooms, science laboratories, multipurpose exhibit halls and bird and wildlife viewing decks are included in the included in the plans the private nonprofit has on the 5.3 acres of land at Harriet M. Wieder Regional Park it is leasing from the county.

Conservancy officials say they will raise private funding for the facilities that are adjacent to a 4-acre playground. County plans call for trails linking the resource with Bolsa Chica State Beach and Huntington Beach Central Park.

Mark Gaughan, chairman of the conservancy's board of directors, said the interpretive center will "showcase this ecological jewel in the heart of the city of Huntington Beach."

Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before "graduating" to OC Weekly in 1995 as the paper's first calendar editor. He has contributed as a freelance editor and writer to several publications and been the subject of or featured in several reports online, in print and on the radio and television. One of countless times he returned to his Costa Mesa, CA, home with a bounty of awards from a journalism competition, his wife told him to take out the trash.